Video: A closer look at narco subs

Photo gallery: Click on the picture above for a look at the narco subs.

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Drug traffickers are spending $1 million a pop to build boats that look like submarines and can carry 4 tons of cocaine for 2,000 miles without refueling. Nicknamed “narco subs,” they’re made to sneak loads up from South America to Mexico, where the drugs are offloaded and taken overland into the United States.

Last month, Houston Chronicle reporter Dane Schiller was traveling with the U.S. Coast Guard when they spotted a narco sub 500 miles off Colombia’s coast.

It has long been the stuff of drug-trafficking legend, but federal authorities announced on Saturday that they have helped seize the first known and fully operational submarine built by drug traffickers to smuggle tons of cocaine from South America toward the United States.

The diesel-electric powered submarine was captured in an Ecuadorian jungle waterway leading to the Pacific Ocean, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The sub, which is about 100 feet long and equipped with a periscope, was seized before its maiden voyage by Ecuadorian authorities armed with DEA intelligence.

The discovery is seen by authorities as a game-changer in terms of the challenge it poses not only to fighting drugs but to national security as well.